posted August 10, 2016 23:37
Hi folks, just a heads up at some changes we're making around here.

We're having a lot of difficulty generating enough income to keep the site going.

We never liked having ads on our website, but they were a necessary evil that allowed us to continue our work. Not so much anymore. Over the past year, there has been a collapse of display advertising as a revenue source for sites like ours, combined with the rise of ad blockers. Many sites have shifted to clickbait models, but we are not willing to subject our fans to native ads, sponsored posts, and all that other garbage that's sprouted up everywhere. Instead, we are setting up a Patreon page and hoping to make up income that way.

Our comic will still appear on our website like usual, but Patreon's system makes other things like small payments (starting at $1) and extra content easier, and perhaps we can pick up some new supporters from some of the people already there.

Being the independent geeks we are, we're a little uncomfortable moving to a third party system, but we don't have much choice at this point. We are hoping that support from Patreons can help fill in the gap where advertising has fallen away and will enable us to continue to create our work and deliver it for free on the web to everyone. We're dreaming that perhaps it will enable us to eliminate advertising, and to pay some bills and update some of our decade-old hardware.

A note for SuperFans...If it wasn't for our wonderful and loyal Superfans, we would have folded years ago. We can't thank you enough. Those Superfans who wish to continue their support can keep on doing it directly via PayPal, or if you want to sign up via Patreon, that's great too. (If you don't feel like signing up via Patreon, let me know and I'll send you some goodies directly). If you need help canceling your SuperFan subscription, just let me know too, it's hard to find on PayPal's site.

posted August 19, 2016 13:43
Update - still no joy. Support pretty quickly responded with some useless boilerplate about how I could see what creators I'm supporting. I think that was automated. But then a real person contacted me asking for details from the browser debug console, which I provided yesterday. Haven't heard anything since. If I can find a moment today I'll give it a shot from my phone. The number of patrons has gone up since I started trying, so it's obviously not affecting everyone.

Ugh, MightyClubMember # 3112

posted August 22, 2016 12:44
So I tried this on my phone over the weekend and lo and behold it worked! Yay!

SnaggyMember # 123

posted August 22, 2016 13:43
Yay Ugh! Thanks so much!

Xanoxt R'rilanderMember # 890

posted September 30, 2016 02:05
Oh, and it is something that I wanted to post here about. There are new ways to monetize content are on a rise, based on blockchain technology and the attention economy. Quite a few of them are in the making, but right now there is Steemit, which while in beta is something you might want to check out. There is a lot of cool techy stuff going on with bitcoin (for quite a while now), and other blockchains.Steemit is a blogging site, something akin to Reddit, or Livejournal, but with monetary incentives, in the form of cryptocurrency.

And another reason I came, is to again delve into archives, and get the texts I did when first joinined GeekCulture back in 2001, and one thing I can compare my experience on Steemit is with the same experience here. That is one of the reasons I wanted to share it.

Would also be nice to see how my writing changed over the course of 15 years. :-D

There are some other solutions comming like Yours.Network, Akasha and Synereo, but they are yet to launch.

One of the things that Steem is trying to accomplish is to promote the use of their cryptocurrency by the merchants, online & otherwise, thats why they have Steem Backed Dollar, which is pegged to the USD. Right now there is a p2p marketplace platform that allows for Steem$, as well as paypal and some other options at peerhub.comThere are also widgets to accept Steem on the websites, as well as efforts are made to add SBD and Steem to coinpayments.net

Anyhow, this stuff is pretty revolutionary!

And to be more on topic, good luck with Patreon, a lot of my favorite content producers are using it. :-) And while it might be a bit too much hassle to send my SBD to Patreon, I pledge to donate 5 SBD to you, once you have a wallet to accept them. 8)

gk200062Member # 50420

posted October 01, 2016 14:00
I subscribed to Joy of Tech by using Patreon and is safer.

azureMember # 50421

posted October 05, 2016 20:09
Heard about Patreon, but it's all about getting your link and message across and seen by as many people as possible. This could be scheduling a time at least once (or five) times a day linking to the Patreon link so that people know about it. I really only found out about it by chance on Twitter though could easily miss it since I am not there often now. I think it is worth making a list of emails of websites, news, blogs, etc that have linked to you to share the news about Patreon to increase the exposure to this new initiative. Good luck!